Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has taken Washington, D.C by storm.She successfully ran an insurgent, grass-roots Congressional campaign. She is exceptionally bright. She is incredibly media savvy. She is hugely charismatic, because she is telegenic and photogenic, but also because she consistently seems to be a sincere, authentic, and truly nice and caring human being. In an age of bullshit, she is “real.” And she has the courage of her convictions. She has thus quickly been embraced by the left, reviled by the right, and treated with enormous skepticism by the center. Jeffrey C. Isaac
The left often agonizes over the choice between pragmatism versus utopianism. The “reformists” will argue that what’s important is making “real” change in the present, rejecting any larger vision as “pie-in-the-sky” irresponsibility, while the “revolutionaries” may reject all present compromise in favor of theorizing about a better future, for which the correct historical conditions are always, somehow, yet to arrive. It’s a dumb standoff; reformers need militants to scare the powerful into concessions, as the recent experience of the Fair Labor Association and USAS at Kuk Dong shows. Dissent"My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize." Rep. Hank Johnson D-GA upon hearing about adding military personnel on Guam
The Congress is chock-full of goofs, ninnies and grifters. Rep. Hank Johnson thought a troop build-up would capsize the island of Guam. Congress always has been a home for cretins feebs and dummies. However, there was a time when the dim-bulbs were kept under a cone-of-silence and generally kept out of public view.
Today, Alexandra Occasio-Cortez has become a national acronym - AOC.
Like LSMFT, AOC reflects a spiritus mundi, a zeitgeist, and a political weltanschauung that makes the likes of Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren seem like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Muriel Siebert and Mercy Otis Warren.
I began my morning with an article by a practiced ninnie and dim-bulb, Indiana University professor Jeffery C. Issacs that further boost AOC as our best hope to become the SPQR of the looming post revolutionary empire:
It is worth taking a moment to think hard about this.
To liberal friends who are pretty skeptical of if not hostile to AOC: what do you make of the fact that it is she who is being singled out for her fine performance? Many more “moderate” and more senior Democrats also had their five minutes yesterday, and yet this 29-year old “radical” would appear to have most intelligently used her time to advance the cause of the rule of law, a liberal value if every there was one, in this matter.
To left, DSA-member friends who love AOC (as I do) but disparage all of those liberals, like me, who continue to place so much emphasis on Trump’s real threats to the rule of law, constitutional due process, and liberal democracy: what do you make of the fact that AOC did not use her five minutes to talk about the Green New Deal (which she rightly talks about all the time!) or to comment on how the hearings are a waste of time and the real policy issues are being ignored (it was the lunatic Republicans who said this). She used her five minutes to ask painstakingly direct and factual questions of the witness, and thus to seriously address the issue at hand in the hearings: the issue of Trump’s unhinged and unaccountable Presidency, and the need to defend constitutional democracy by using constitutionally-prescribed Congressional authority to hold Trump to account.
AOC is much more serious, and politically responsible, and “mature,” and thus important, than most commentators, those who love her and those who don’t, appreciate. While too many, left, right, and center, are using her as a symbol to beat each other up, she is doing her job and being a role model of what Democratic politics can be.
Seriously? Much thought there, Doc? AOC is much, much more serious?
How about these AOC nuggets? BTW -one quote is from a dead white man -guess which one and win a chance to chill backstage with AOC.
- Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not always exist in the world.
- Congress is too old. They don't have a stake in the game.
- Women like me aren't supposed to run for office.
- I wake up every day, and I'm a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. Every single day.
- To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
- I was born in a place where your ZIP code determines your destiny.
One of the above earned the Medal of Honor, broke horses, worked in Law Enforcement in Wyoming and New Yok City, authored many books and served as Governor, the other Tweets, is a Socialist and managed to beat someone dumber, but without Democratic Socialists of America backing for Congress and will serve but one term before going on CNN, or MSNBC.
AOC will do some legislative damage to the Republic in mean time.
We have given the stage of public debate to be people who could not tell you whick White Sox player in its history was a an all-time favorite, evene though that elected offical and pensioned President of the United States wore a Chicago White Sox hat at every public dress-down affair.
I taught English for 43 years and voted in every election since 1972. I ran and lost for Kankakee City Clerk as a Democrat. PFH is no AOC.
However, I was never scripted, nor promoted by a professor of Revolution from Indiana University.
Here in Illinois we have many, many, many AOCs
- Jan Schakowsky
- Danny Davis
- Mike Quigley
- Heather Steans
- Kelly Cassidy
- Blago
- Toni Preckwinkle
- Pat Quinn
- Forrest Claypool
- Deb Mell
- Deb Shore
- Amy Madigan
All of these People who would starve to death outside of Progressive Democratic Party politics.
Giving the microphone, or the floor, or a public office to the senseless is dangerous, no matter how much delicious spleen they vent, Tweet or . . . God help us . . .legislate.
